Notes Introduction 1. On the Muslim ‘gunpowder empires’, see Marshall Hodgson, The Venture of Islam: Gunpowder Empires and Modern Times, Vol. III (1974). On the Ahmad Shah Abdali and the founding of the Durrani Empire, see Ganda Singh, Ahmad Shah Durrani: Father of Modern Afghanistan (1959); Fayz Muhammad Katib, Siraj Al-Tavarikh (Hijra 1372 (1993/1994)). 2. Arnold Fletcher, Afghanistan: Highway of Conquestt (1965). 3. See, for example, Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, ‘Inter-Regional Trade and Colonial State Formation in 19th Century Afghanistan’ (University of Michigan). 4. The ‘Pashtun’ are also referred to as the ‘Pukhtun’, the former being the softer usage of the southern dialect of Pashto while the latter is the harder usage of the northern dialect of Pukhto. I use Pashtun and Pashto throughout. 5. See, for instance, V. Gregorian, The Emergence of Modern Afghanistan (1969); M.E. Yapp, Strategies of British India: Britain, Iran and Afghanistan 1798–1850 (1980); Edward Ingram, Britain’s Persian Connection, 1798–1828 (1992); Louis Dupree, Afghanistan (1980). 6. Examples of this newer literature include, Christine Noelle, State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan: The Reign of Amir Dost Muhammad Khan, 1826–1863 (1997); Zalmay Gulzad, External Influences and the Development of the Afghan State in the Nineteenth Centuryy (1994). 7. See, for instance, C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information (2002); Douglas Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth-Century India (1995); J.S. Grewal, The Sikhs of the Punjab (1998). 8. See, for example, Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (1996); Eugene Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India 1796–1895 (1994). 9. See, for instance, C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (2004); Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik, The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture and the World Economy, 1400-the Presentt (1999). 10. Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (2001); David Ludden, ‘Orientalist Empiricism: Transformation of Colonial Knowledge,’ in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicamentt (1993); Ronald Inden, ‘Orientalist Constructions of India’, Modern Asian Studies. 11. Weber defined a state as having a central political authority controlling a definite territorial and enjoying a monopoly of the legitimate violence. 1 The power of colonial knowledge 1. For a summary of Elphinstone’s mission, see S.R. Bakshi, ‘Elphinstone’s Mission to Kabul’, Journal of Indian History. The British had previously dispatched diplomatic correspondence to Timur Shah in the late eighteenth century via an itinerant sayyid, Ghulam Muhammad. Robert Nichols, Settling the Frontier: Law, Land and Society in the Peshawar Valley, 1500–1900 (2001), 81. 176 Notes 177 2. For a discussion of colonial knowledge, see Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colonialism and the Making of Modern India (2001); Bernard Cohn, Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India (1996); Eugene Irschick, Dialogue and History: Constructing South India 1796–1895 (1994). 3. Matthew Edney, Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India, 1765–1843 (1990), 40–1. 4. For a discussion of ‘colonial information order’, see C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information (2002). 5. Elphinstone’s Account was similar in intellectual genesis, though decidedly smaller in scale, to the French Description de l‘Egypte published in twenty-three volumes between 1809 and 1823. Edward Said, Orientalism (2003), 84–7. 6. Ronald Inden defines a ‘hegemonic text’ in the following terms: [It] is not concerned with narrow and internalist issues of the discipline itself but with the broader questions of [Afghanistan’s] place in the world and history, issues in which those outside of the discipline, the active subjects of the world – business and government leaders – and the more passive subjects of the world’s history, the populace at large, are interested. It is, furthermore, an account that is seen, during the period of its predominance, to exercise leadership in a field actively and positively and not one that is merely imposed on it. A hegemonic text is also totalizing – it provides an account of every aspect of [Afghan] life. It accounts for all the elements that the relevant knowing public wants to know about. Ronald Inden, ‘Orientalist Constructions of India’, Modern Asian Studies, 417. While Inden’s discussion of Orientalist texts is useful, Norbert Peabody’s critique does an excellent job identifying its shortcomings. Norbert Peabody, ‘Tod’s Rajast’han and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth Century India’, Modern Asian Studies. 7. David Ludden, ‘Orientalist Empiricism: Transformation of Colonial Knowledge’, in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicamentt (1993), 259. 8. See, for instance, A. Burnes, Travels into Bokhara; Together with a Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus (2003; reprint, 1834). 9. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1 (1991; reprint, 1838), 284. 10. Martha McLaren, British India and British Scotland, 1780–1830: Career Building, Empire Building, and a Scottish School of Thought on Indian Governance (2001), 120. 11. Ibid., 66. 12. For a description of that universe, see George Stocking, Jr. Victorian Anthropology (1987), 8–45. 13. Martha McLaren, British India and British Scotland, 1780–1830: Career Building, Empire Building, and a Scottish School of Though on Indian Governancee (2001), 30, 64. 14. James Tod’s Annals and Antiquities of Rajast’han is another example of the philosophical histories produced by early generations of scholar administrators. See generally Norbert Peabody, ‘Tod’s Rajast’han, and the Boundaries of Imperial Rule in Nineteenth Century India’, Modern Asian Studies. 15. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1 (1991; reprint, 1838), vi–vii; Jane Rendall, ‘Scottish Orientalism: From Robertson to James Mill’, The Historical Journal, 50. 16. Elphinstone to Colebrooke, 16 December 1811, Edinburgh, Minto Papers, Ms. 11727. 178 Notes 17. Ibid. 18. Elphinstone to Lord Minto, 20 November 1811, Edinburgh, Minto Papers, Ms. 11722. 19. For a discussion of how the eighteenth-century values colouring Elphinstone’s writings affected other areas of Company policy, notably the Bengal Permanent Settlement, see Ranajit Guha, A Rule of Property for Bengal: An Essay on the Idea of Permanent Settlementt (1963). 20. See George Stocking, Victorian Anthropologyy (1987), 10–20. One must bear in mind Frederic Cooper’s admonition not to homogenize ‘Enlightenment values’ into a totalizing monolith, but rather to recognize the complexity of the Enlightenment past. Frederick Cooper, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, Historyy (2005), 3–33. 21. Jane Rendall, ‘Scottish Orientalism’, The Historical Journal, 45. 22. See generally G. Alder, Beyond Bokhara: The Life of William Moorcroft, Asian Explorer and Pioneer, Veterinary Surgeon, 1767–1825 (1985). 23. See generally McLaren, British India and British Scotland, 1780–1830: Career Building, Empire Building, and a Scottish School of Though on Indian Governance (2001); Douglas Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in Early Nineteenth-Century India (1995). 24. Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (1959), 9. 25. Thomas Metcalf, Ideologies of the Raj (1994), 26–7. 26. Notes on the Hazaras of Bisut, 1838, IOR, London, Masson Papers, MSS.Eur.E166/ MSS.Eur.J643; Hassan Poladi, The Hazaras (1989). 27. Masson did publish a few volumes of his travels. Charles Masson, Narrative of a Journey to Kalat, Including an Account of the Insurrection at That Place in 1840; and a Memoir on Eastern Balochistan (1843); Masson, Narrative of Various Journey in Baloochistan, Afghanistan and the Punjab, Vol. 3 (1974). 28. A. Burnes, Travels into Bokhara; Together with a Narrative of a Voyage on the Indus (2003; reprint, 1834); Burnes, Cabool: Being a Personal Narrative of a Journey to and Residence in That City, in the Years 1836, 7 and 8 (1842). 29. William Moorcroft and George Trebeck, Travels in India: Himalayan Provinces of Hindustan and the Punjab in Ladakh and Kashmir in Peshawar, Kabul, Kunduz, and Bokhara from 1819 to 1825 (2000; reprint, 1841). For a discussion of the process of publication involved with Moorcroft’s journals, see John Keay, When Men and Mountains Meet: The Explorers of the Western Himalayas, 1820–75 (1977; reprint in 2000), 44–5. 30. He places this generational shift in the 1840s. David Washbrook, ‘India, 1818–1860: The Two Faces of Colonialism’, in Oxford History of the British Empire (1999), 417. 31. Observations on the Political State and Resources of Afghanistan, 23 January 1835, NAI, New Delhi, Foreign Department, Political Consultations, No. 46. 32. See generally Michael Fisher, Indirect Rule in India: Residents and the Residency System (1991), 316–74. 33. C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information (2002), 6–9, 212–46; David Ludden, ‘Orientalist Empiricism: Transformation of Colonial Knowledge’, in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicamentt (1993), 267–8. 34. David Ludden, ‘India’s Development Regime’, in Colonialism and Culture (1992), 256. 35. Between 1849 and 1899, the Punjab government undertook 64 military expeditions against the tribes. Lal Baha, N.-W.F.P. Administration under British Rule, 1901–1919 (1978), 5. Notes 179 36. Scots accounted for over fifty per cent of Europeans in a number of fields in India. Ian J. Barrow, Making History, Drawing Territory: British Mapping in India, C. 1756–1905 (2003), 26; Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation (1992), 369. 37. See, for example, Edward Stirling, Some Considerations on the Political State of the Intermediate Countries between Persia and India, with Reference to the Project of Russia Marching an Army through Them (1835), 32; Arthur Conolly, Journey to the North of India, over the Land from England through Russia, Persia and Afghanistan, Vol. 2 (1834), 121–2. 38. Mountstuart Elphinstone, An Account of the Kingdom of Caubul, Vol. 1 (1991; reprint, 1838), 231. 39. Ibid., 255. 40. Elphinstone recognized the limits of the analogy on this point.